Council workers surfing net at desks

Council workers in the West Midlands are shopping online and searching for holidays, homes and cars at their desks, it emerged today.

Argos, Amazon, Debenhams and Thomson holidays are popular among the region's council workers, whose jobs are currently under greater scrutiny than ever due to public spending cuts,

The information about the most popular websites visited by council workers has been released under the Freedom of Information Act. But bosses today stressed that staff were only using websites, including social networking site Facebook, during lunch breaks and outside of working time.

The most popular website is internet search engine Google, which clocked up millions of "hits". Sandwell Council staff recorded 12.7 million hits on the social networking site Facebook.

But Freedom of Information officer Nigel Parr said: "The council's acceptable use policy does allow personal use of the internet by employees but that this should be undertaken in non working time such as lunch breaks. It should be noted that the number of hits is not the same as the number of visits to a website. A website page in many instances will include multiple components and each of these will be counted as individual hits even if only one page is visited."

Staffordshire County Council workers also recorded 1.8m hits on Facebook as well as 629,458 hits on Argos online.

Staff at Wolverhampton City Council read the Express & Star's website 748,869 times over the past 12 months, while Amazon clocked up 254,791 hits and Facebook 215,744. Property website Rightmove had 183,511 hits.

Dudley Council's most popular website visited by staff was the BBC, clocking up 140 hours over the past 12 months. Staff spent a combined 10 hours on Amazon.

Walsall Council could only list the websites visited over 90 days. The most popular was Google followed by the BBC but car selling website Auto Trader and Dorothy Perkins featured in the 100 most visited.

Staff at transport authority Centro were using Facebook but also clocked up 125,785 hits on the holiday company Thomson's website. South Staffordshire Council logged on to Amazon with 18,139 hits and Auto Trader with 11,135. Lichfield District Council staff went on auction site ebay, recording 868,044 hits, making it the council's 11th most popular website for visits.

Councillor Colin Greatorex said: "While we are careful to make sure our employees are not using social networking sites during their work time for personal reasons, as a council we have been quick to adapt to the changing face of e-communications, and use social networking sites."